Fences
by Bienvenue
Summary: The memories shared between a girl and Grimmjow Jaggerjeaques of a world created by sinful souls, where together they find a family amongst black markers, musical notes, words, the color purple, and chess. Slight Grimm/OC, rated for mild language. DONE.
1. If

She liked him.

She would never admit this to his face, of course. But out of all of the arrancar assigned to take care of her, he was the only Espada that ever visited her.

He listened to her.

He would sit quietly, though that seemed impossible, as she would vent to him. She had even slapped him once out of her anger.

Of course, he didn't even feel it. She was the one with the fractured wrist.

She remembered their first conversation. It wasn't much of a conversation, really. Just a loud war of insults, which, if you took the cuss words out, weren't really sentences at all. It had taken him nearly a month (or maybe only a few days; it was impossible to gauge time) to promote his method of address from 'little bitch' to 'girl'. And for her, it had taken her almost two times as long just to call him anything, though 'drunk' didn't really count either. Secretly, the thought of him and alcohol together in the same room scared her. She didn't want to find out what the special combo was for that.

They mellowed out, eventually.

She remembered, once, that she had asked him a question about the other Espada, Ulquiorra, who she had seen in small glances in half-second intervals when her door was opened, only to allow Grimmjow in and out.

It was the first time she had seen him in a genuine rage.

He shouted, screamed, cussed, and even stomped a little. He destroyed her room completely, turning all of her furniture to dust. He would have destroyed her walls, too, if he hadn't stopped as suddenly as he had begun, only to look at her witheringly and say,

"Don't you _dare_ say that name to me. You understand, you little bitch? Never."

In his eyes, she had clearly been demoted times a billion.

Never in a lifetime would she admit that he had scared her.

She didn't really want her room repaired after that. She refused the fraccion who had rushed in (after he had left, of course) and offered to have her moved to a different room. She looked at each piece, each fragment of furniture reduced to a sort of ash-like substance by his cero.

She thought hollows, or Espada, for that matter, weren't supposed to be in any way human aside from appearance.

Out of every single hollow she had encountered, hell, out of every single person she had ever known,

He seemed the most human to her.

He returned a few days later after that incident and sat on the rubble of what was once a couch. He just sat there with her. He didn't say anything. Not that he needed to.

All he said, with this wicked grin on his face, "Scary, innit?'

They talked about music. Grimmjow didn't like music. He said he didn't understand it. He didn't even know what a piano was.

She laughed at a little mental image of him, all groomed like a sleek tomcat, wearing a suit and tie, playing a piano. He'd like something a little more violent. But somehow, obvious things, like an electric guitar or drums or whatever, didn't seem to fit him.

She vowed that one day she would teach him how to play a piano. How she would wrestle him into it, hell if she knew, but she knew it would happen.

After a long time, it didn't seem like she had been kidnapped.

This place, Las Noches, seemed like home to her.

She noticed that her room began to smell like him. He had made himself so at home in her room that it had, in a way, become his too. There was a place where he would lounge on the couch, a small armchair where he would sit and pick at the food she refused to eat, even a shallow dent in the far wall where she knew he would lean and watch her sleep.

He smelled…strange. In a good way, though. He smelled like a forest, almost, though she was sure he had never been in such a place in his life. Musky and mossy and unbelievably warm. Spicy, almost.

Somewhere in there was a small hint of dark chocolate. Bitter and smooth and sweet.

She liked his smell.

He was the most unsafe thing in the world, hell, in the universe, that she could be around. And yet, he made her feel safe.

She felt guilty that she barely thought of home anymore.

She remembered Grimmjow talk about that other girl. Inoue Orihime, or something. She had known that name in high school, and how Kurosaki Ichigo and Ishida Uryuu and Sado Yasutora and someone named Kuchiki Rukia had broke into Las Noches to save her.

She didn't have friends like them.

And frankly, she didn't want to be saved, either.

She was angry at them for destroying what little piece of tranquility she had.

She wanted to meet this Orihime girl.

She asked Grimmjow if she could, but he looked at her as if she had just suggested that Aizen secretly played with dolls in his hours spent alone.

She didn't have powers like Orihime. She didn't even know why she was here. She didn't seem special. She didn't have any weird ass hair clips that 'tampered in the realm of god' as Grimmjow had so mockingly quoted.

All she had done was walk home an hour late.

Then, next thing she knew, two men in strange clothing had appeared out of nowhere. They looked like they were fighting about something.

And then one had turned his eyes, green like emeralds and which pierced her to the very core, upon her.

"Who are you, trash?"

His voice wasn't alive like Grimmjow's.

It was flat and dead and cold.

She hated Ulquiorra Schiffer.

She wanted to take him by the shoulders and shake him and scream at him and rip out his throat.

So he would never talk to her with that voice, that horrible, lifeless, scorning sound, ever again.

**A/N: I haven't decided on a name yet. I would like my readers to choose one of their liking. Review or PM with your favorite female name (non-japanese prefferable, European preffered) and I'll use that as her name for the chapters to come if I decide to continue this.**

**This is not a romance story.  
**


	2. We

He told her that her name was Blanca.

He said this when he welcomed her for the first time.

He was beautiful.

Aizen.

He said this with such a kind, soft, fatherly tone, with his eyes shining with trust and something akin to admiration, and his perfect mouth turned up at the ends into a smile. His skin was flawless and silken, and even though he was such a tiny figure way up high, she felt like he was right next to her. The weight of his being pressed down on her, even though he was so far away, and she found it difficult to breath. She was told later that this was the weight of his 'spiritual energy'.

Even though she had been called by her original name for nearly seventeen years, she accepted the name Blanca immediately. She couldn't remember her original name. She felt closer to the man by having a name given to her by him.

She loved Aizen in the way all of the Arrancar did. She couldn't quite explain why. It was different from physical attraction, though he was plenty of that; it was more of a fraternal bond.

Even though Aizen was strictly Japanese, she loved the way Spanish rolled off of his tongue. It was smooth and almost seductive; the purr of his tongue when he pronounced certain syllables seemed like chocolate drizzling an already pricelessly delicious confection. In this language he first greeted her.

"_Bienvenido, Blanca." _

She wanted to see him again, but Grimmjow wouldn't let her.

"Yer a crazy lil' bitch, aren't ya?" he said to her.

It was then that Spanish became her favorite language, and she tried to teach herself to speak it, picking up little terms used by the Espada and Fraccion.

During her first days, she was naturally angry and abashed. She had no idea what the hell Shinigami were, let alone Hollows. This all seemed like a huge hoax, but when she accused Grimmjow of being a fake, he got so angry that he kicked open a wall and then said, "That look fake to you, ballerina?"

She had no idea why he called her ballerina. He would call her balarin, too. She liked the Spanish variation better. It surely had nothing to do with her grace, which she thoroughly lacked. She would fall _up_ the stairs back at home.

Such displays of violence from her caretaker became many and frequent. When she wouldn't eat he's bust the tray into pieces with barely a flick of his wrist. She had gotten so many replacement couches she forgot what the original one looked like, and her much abused walls received ruthless beatings daily.

It didn't bother her so much after a while.

She would have preferred him to any other of the Espada. Especially Ulquiorra.

After a few days, Grimmjow explained the whole mess to her. He told her what Shinigami were, as well as Hollows, Arrancar, Espada, and all the other things.

When she wanted to know where she fit in all this stuff, but he ignored her.

It was during the next few weeks that she received her Arrancar clothing. They were wonderfully white like Grimmjow's; it was styled in a simple dress that was sleeveless. The first layer was more like a cape, and it draped over her small figure and ended just above her ankles, which were now clad in black toe socks and the traditional white sandals. The second layer beneath the cape was light and lacy. There was a high lacy collar, too, trimmed with black, which was connected to the neckline of her dress and held the whole thing together.

He told her that the darkness of her hair contrasted nicely with the bleached of the clothing and her pallid complexion.

She thought those were the only kind words she had ever heard come out of his mouth.

Once, she asked Grimmjow for a black marker. After a few days worth of curse-wars, he gave up and was gone for a day searching for one. When he returned to her quarters, he produced a thick black marker, probably used by the Fraccion.

With this marker she scrawled words upon her wall. With this marker she forced Grimmjow to write all of the Spanish he knew onto the wall, which she now called her 'collection'. The words she put were all single, seemingly random words. Most of these were her favorites to pronounce or spell; words like sober, demitasse, revolver, crow, plum, solemn.

Above each word she wrote a musical note, and she proceeded to teach her caretaker the musical staff and how to read music through those words.

Then she drew a diagram of a piano, rather uneven and sloppy, and then wrote the letter of each musical note onto the key that produced that note, as well as a small picture of the word that she had paired with the note.

When Grimmjow got frustrated, she'd yell at him until he'd agree to destroy something other than the collection.

It was then that Grimmjow's favorite word became the word oblation.

It didn't take many days for the wall to begin to crowd with information and diagrams. The cluttered mess, only decipherable to her and Grimmjow, was a nice interruption of the too-perfect white of the walls.

On that wall she taught him how to play chess, too. Then, to add to the clutter and overlapping black scribbles, there were games of chess that they'd draw lines and letters to tell where they had moved a piece.

He was quite bad at it. He always went straight for the king.

When they first played, he asked her a curious question.

"When you capture the king, do you kill him and take his place?"

She didn't know how to answer that.

**A/N: Thanks for all of your suggestions, and I've decided on the name Blanca. Bienvenido means welcome. I'll have a picture up of her outfit soon, it's kind of hard to put into words. Thank's for reading, reviews are my food!**

**Bien  
**


	3. Are

She often wondered if he got bored leaning against their collection wall and watching her sleep.

He was always gone when she woke up, but all throughout the night she could feel his eyes on her. The first night, it felt strange, and she found it difficult to sleep, but now she couldn't sleep without him there.

She asked him why he watched her the morning after that, but he shrugged and said,

'Got nuthin' better to do.'

It wasn't long after that when he became accomplished in silent piano playing that he began to ask about songs, lyrics particularly. When he returned to her quarters one day after a mission to the human world, he brought her back a bunch of words scribbled onto a scrap of paper. They were a jumble of things, just words that he said he liked the sound of. Most, surprisingly enough, weren't violent or morbid. She drew a box in the corner of the wall, about three or four feet wide and five feet tall, and labeled at the top,

_Grimmjow's Words._

Beneath this label she wrote his favorites and the ones he brought back from the human world. The words _Oblation_ and _Dictator_ were displayed on the top of the list by request.

After he had collected about fifty words to his liking, he asked her something strange.

'Teach me to write a song.'

Though puzzled, she did.

She showed him how to put words into metaphors and to arrange them to have double meanings so he could accomplish what he wanted to say. The finished product, though somewhat gruff, and nothing really rhymed, was surprisingly poetic.

The song was rather short, but it told a story that she wondered was something like his own. It was a little sad, but he refused to give any insight on the lyrics.

Recently, headaches became many and painful. They originated from two spots on the top of her head that had grown tender and swollen. She had complained to Grimmjow about them, and he had an alarmingly blunt answer.

''Cause you got horn's growin' outta your head, ballerina.'

He reached over and rapped the top of her head with his knuckles. It was like he had dropped a bomb or something on her head. Pain exploded like fire through her veins, and she was reduced to a violently shivering mass on the floor.

She cussed loudly and Grimmjow grinned. 'I'm not gunna say I'm sorry, you know.'

'Grimm, why the fuck am I growing _horns_?' She asked. He scratched the back of his head, leaning back in a pensive manner.

'Ulquiorra said something' like this would happen. Something to do with the spirit particles around here that's doin' something to your body. If it gets too bad, ballerina, I'll have to take you down to the medical ward and do some…_amputatin'.'_ He grinned wildly.

Grimmjow had never been good at explaining things, and this particular explanation wasn't exactly a breakthrough.

Grudgingly, she decided that if she wanted straight information, she would have to go to the source. But, seeking out Ulquiorra was both impossible and repelling. She would be perfectly content if she never saw that face again.

Contrary to the day before, Grimmjow had become rather moody and dark. She did her best to cheer him up; trying to start an insult match, provoked him, even sat on his chest a couple of times, but nothing she could do would bring him out of his strange mood.

He had taken up residence on her couch, twisted around on his stomach and playing with the fringe on the bottom of it. He would braid three threads and then move on. When he finished braiding, he ripped the whole length of fabric from the construction of the piece of furniture and watched it fall in tatters to the cold floor with eyes like the sky before a storm.

When she tried to sit down next to him, he refused to make room for her. He kicked her lightly enough that she only bruised.

Eventually she got pissed enough to ask him head on.

'What the fuck is wrong?'

Him being her only company for weeks now, his harsh brand of language had rubbed off on her.

He looked at her with the kind of expression he had never given her.

The kind of expression he'd make if he was looking at something particularly disgusting and immoral. Like she was kicking a child or some other ungodly thing.

She very nearly tripped over her own feet in effort to put as much distance between her and his fist. She knew that he wouldn't hurt her, but considering the nasty shade of red his face had become with rage, she didn't want to give him the chance.

He left her room, slamming the door so it didn't close properly, dangling crookedly on its invisible hinges to reveal a figure standing just outside the doorway.

Staring in with those horrible green eyes radiated hatred and scorn at her was the ghostly pale face of Ulquiorra Schiffer.

He lingered only for a few seconds before he closed her door and left, leaving her alone in her too-white room with the words of Grimmjow's song screaming at her from the collection wall.


	4. Sinners

It was funny how he watched her that night while she stared up at the ceiling. She could feel his eyes. He didn't say anything.

All along the wall he had written some words. There weren't very many of them, and she hadn't read them yet. The only thing she could read without turning her head were the words at the top.

_Apologies are words _

She didn't want to read the rest.

She was on her bed, spread out instead of curled up. She imagined that above her was a blue sky and clouds with planes instead of white.

She had come to hate that color. She had come to despise it. It was not innocent, it was not pure.

The color white only hid things.

Her favorite color had become blue.

Her dreams were in blue, her thoughts were in blue. The map of veins beneath her skin was blue. The sky which she used to look up into was blue. The ocean was blue. Forget-me-nots were blue. His eyes were blue. Blue was open and honest. Blue had nothing to hide. Blue had so many shades, so many wonderfully different hues. White had only one.

She never told him that her favorite color had become blue.

He might have spoken. He might have said something. But she didn't hear him. She was completely deaf that night.

She slept under his eyes again.

When she woke up she was still looking at the ceiling.

Upon the ceiling there were still no clouds. There were no planes. There was no sky.

But there were words.

There weren't many words, but they screamed at her with such an intensity that it made up for their small number. It was only a few lines.

_There are too many words_

_You think in words_

_You hear words_

_You sing words_

_But there aren't enough words_

_To make you see_

_When you are blind._

She knew he had written them. Hell if she knew how he had done it without awakening her.

She sat up and rubbed the top of her head to check the progress of the mysterious growths.

Still painful. But they were small. The lumps were possibly two or three inches wide and half as tall. They weren't big enough to part her hair yet.

She angled her head upward and let her hair cascade down her back and she smiled. She looked at the words until suddenly she realized that they had been written with a blue marker.

He had gone from the room and she had to wait longer than usual for his return. While she waited, she had gotten out of bed and gotten dressed, and examined the words on the collection wall which she hadn't bothered to read last night.

_Apologies are words_

_But the words_

_Of an apology_

_Are not accepted_

_From someone_

_Who truly means _

_To apologize._

He had left the black marker, dry and overused, on the ground. But he had taken the blue marker with him.

She looked over all of the words on their collection wall.

She felt a little pang of sadness when she saw all of them. There were so many, but even these words couldn't explain what she had found while writing them.

She stood on top of her bed with the black marker and reached up towards the ceiling and wrote,

_To Grimmjow;_

_To be blind of beauty_

_Is to be blind of ugliness and suffering. _

_But those of us who can see will have to find_

_And love_

_What they can._

_-Blanca_

She wasn't sure if he would understand. With the body of an adult, she knew that deep down, he was only a child.

He was a child who was lost and lonely and wanted nothing more than to rest.

She could see this child in his eyes when he wrote the words on the wall.

She knew that she had given him something, and he, in return, had given her something.

His gift to her, though possibly unintentional, was something that she'd had before, but not in this context.

In this little world they had created with all of these words and piano keys and songs and chess, he had given her a family.

When he returned, she couldn't quite stop smiling at him.


	5. Then

He got into a strange mood the next few days.

He came into her room, blood dripping off of every curve, every arc of muscle, from an array of long, slim cuts that looked relatively deep.

He shouted and kicked and screamed and cursed. He destroyed her room again, punching and ripping and tearing, but through all of his rage, he didn't touch any of the walls. He avoided them with the last shred of conscious thought that he still had through all of the shouts.

His words were somehow so heartbreaking and frightening to her that she couldn't remember them, nor wanted to, after the incident.

The only thing she remembered that he hated the color green.

He said it was such a hideous, diseased, sickening color.

It didn't matter to him that her eyes were green.

Though he didn't pay his injuries any mind, she watched the blood fly with silent terror in a rain from his violent movements, splattering the walls, floor, and furniture with a shower of small crimson droplets.

When he was finished, he didn't say second words to her. He didn't explain. He didn't apologize.

He left her to watch where his blood had landed on the blue writing on the wall, and the letters were streaming a blotchy violet color, like the color of bruised skin.

The word 'apologies' was barely legible anymore because its letters had been attacked so much with red that it was just an ugly, throttled purple smear.

She had a chance, curled on a pile of rubble, rubbing bits and pieces of what had been her couch between her fingers, to look over her room.

It looked like it had been the room of a madman who had shot himself after scribbling huge amounts of what looked like unrelated, cryptic gibberish on the walls.

--

Unlike most girls, she could look at herself in a mirror for more than 15 minutes and not think she was the ugliest thing that had ever stalked the planet.

She didn't particularly like her body or her face, but she didn't dislike them. She hadn't looked in a mirror for a long time, not since she had entered Hueco Mundo; but she could picture her own face and body easily.

She had pale skin, but with caramel undertones, rather than pink. Her hair was a deep mahogany that used to have blonde highlights when she was in the sun.

She hadn't been in the sun for such a long time now she was sure her hair had faded to black.

She had always liked her eyes best; they were a soft kind of green, gentle, with a ring of light brown around her pupils. She didn't have those cutting, horribly bright eyes that Ulquiorra did.

But now that Grimmjow had clearly stated his loathing, she somehow felt that she had become ugly.

After his rampage she didn't see him for a long while. Or it could only have been a few days, she had long lost track of time, her internal clock eternally befuddled because of the ever present moon outside her barred window.

When he finally returned, he came with a bonus of news.

'Come with me, ballerina. Aizen-sama wants to see you.'

The look of sheer delight upon her face must have disgusted him, because he didn't even glance over his shoulder to check if she was still following him when they exited the room and began the journey through the identical halls that seemed to last forever.

She would have easily gotten lost without him, who she had difficulty keeping up with, giving his long strides. One step of his could have easily equaled at least five of hers.

She debated whether or not she should say something. For the first time, she felt afraid of him. She didn't know whether to walk beside him (though the idea was impossible, considering she had a hard time even following his fast, irritated pace) or to trail behind him. Every option seemed likely to anger him more.

He was close enough to her that she could reach out and touch him, but the look on his face told her that he was farther away, far past the reach of her hand. He seemed lost in his own angry little storm cloud.

Their journey through the hall was surprisingly silent, uneventful, and uninterrupted. She expected to see fraccion rushing all about, as well as some higher-ranking arrancar making their way to appointments. But the wide boulevards were empty and without even the smallest hint of traffic. Everyone within a mile-radius of Grimmjow's foul mood seemed to pick up on it and thought it best to stay a safe distance.

She could have sworn that by one of the passing corridors she had seen (or heard) a painfully familiar long-tailed coat, but the small flash of movement had disappeared before her mind had registered it was there.

She noticed now for the first time that the innumerable cuts across his body had vanished. There was nothing left save for the stark black number six branded into the skin beside his hollow hole, at which she stared at vacantly. She watched with something akin to disgust, and also fascination, as she could see the upcoming tiles on the floor through the hole.

She had never understood hollows, even though Grimmjow had tried time and again to explain to her.

When they finally reached their destination, a lancing pain racked her brains, and she found it difficult to breath. She felt like she was suddenly being forced by a very tight tube, and for sure she could not fit, but she couldn't escape it, and her lungs refused to cooperate. The swollen lumps on the top of her skull burned and retaliated violently, as if protesting her entering the doors that they had halted briefly in front of.

Though they looked like extremely heavy doors, Grimmjow forced them open with barely a second thought, and when the barrier broke, the pain became nearly unbearable.

Her knees trembled dangerously beneath her, threatening to crumple at any moment beneath her. She practically had to drag herself through the doors.

He was shining like a lighthouse far above her, sitting in repose upon his white chair, flicking the small fringe in front of his face.

Aizen.

He seemed to glow like a lighthouse, soft and gentle and slightly seductive, billions of times as delicious and comforting as chocolate.

Though her pain burned and screamed, she looked up at him, desperately scraping in every feature she could get her eyes on before the agony bent her so viciously she keeled over at her stomach, feeling like she would throw up.

'_Bienvenido, Blanca.'_

She adored his voice. She hadn't heard it in so long she had nearly forgotten it, but it seemed so much better now than from her memory of it; it was smoother and more soothingly delicate than the finest of silks. For a moment everything around her simply disappeared. Somebody else could have shouted at her and she wouldn't herd them.

After what seemed like hours, he purred, 'You are very brave, my dear, for coming here. I would very much like to explain this all to you myself, but you seem to be too pressured to last very long. So I will have someone else, someone I trust very much, and someone who is very closely involved, to explain to you. Ulquiorra, if you please…'

'Yes, Aizen-sama.'


	6. There

Somehow, as she kept her eyes fixed onto the black trimming of his coat, she couldn't get the sound of breaking glass out of her head.

It was entirely silent save for their footsteps as he led her, without speaking, through a narrow white hall (which she noticed, quite unnecessarily, were without the familiar words upon her own walls), but she could hear inside of her head, as if it was her mind itself slowly falling apart, the shatter, the breaking, the destruction.

Ulquiorra Schiffer was a mystery to her. She could scream, she could kick, she could punch until her knuckles bled, she could cry until her cheeks were raw, but absolutely nothing she could do would shake him. Not that she had tried; she wouldn't dare give him the satisfaction to see her fear.

It seemed like it had been apparent in her mind for an eternity, sitting in the back of her head quietly, waiting until she would stumble upon it.

She was afraid of him.

Not in the same way that she would fear Grimmjow in his violent outbursts, even though that fear was deeply rooted within her still; the fear that Ulquiorra gave her made her feel cold inside. It made her feel like everything beneath her skin had frozen, crystallized. Like if someone dropped her, broke her, she would shatter into so many pieces that it would be impossible to put her back together.

And every time he looked at her, she felt the pit of her stomach go cold.

She hated him.

Though she seemed strangely occupied with the way the tail of his coat seemed to move in time with his step, she couldn't get the expression on Grimmjow's face when Ulquiorra proceeded to lead her away from her caretaker.

She was very certain that if Aizen hadn't been present, the two Espada would have engaged in a very violent fight.

She wasn't sure if she had ever seen Grimmjow so angry in her whole time spent here.

Fearing their next meeting and almost panicking at the thought of what he might say, she nearly bumped into her escort when he stopped in front of a small pair of doors.

'I have been asked to take you a remote location due to the delicate nature of what I am to explain,' he said in that dull drawl. He pushed open the doors, leading into a small, dimly lit room, and ushered her inside.

When the door fell closed behind them, the dull clang filled her with a partially unborn panic. She felt the need to run in circles.

The room was small, but surprisingly warm. She had gotten so used to extreme temperatures, the frigid cold of Las Noches and the burning heat that Grimmjow gave off, that the mildness was somewhat alarming.

It was sparsely furnished, but it was comfortable all the same. There was a small, traditional Japanese low table in the center with two cushions on opposite sides of the table. On the far end of the room was a narrow bed, and above that were two shelves.

Compared to the primarily European architectural trend that she had seen in most of Las Noches, the Japanese styled interior was somewhat welcoming. It reminded her of the modest living room in her old house.

Ulquiorra strode serenely over to the table and sat. He looked at her with those eyes of his and she immediately obliged to sit without command, as to avoid his poisonous gaze.

He put the tips of his fingers together and studied her over his white hands. He seemed to blend in with the rest of the room; all white, and then harshly interrupted by stark black and emerald green.

She began to understand why Grimmjow hated the color so much. It was so ugly beside the white. It could be possible, she thought vacantly, for lack activity in her brain, that if Ulquiorra's eyes were blue she would dislike him less.

Impervious to her obviously disgusted expression, the Espada untwined his hands and fingered the collar of his coat, as if thinking to do something or not.

'As a guest in Las Noches,' He said after a time, his tone monotonous. 'I am to ensure that your comfort is to the highest level. I am hoping that you are finding your caretaker…suffice.'

It took her a few moments to find her voice.

'He's fine.'

His fingers tightened around his collar.

'Very well, then. I suppose you want to know why you are here?'

Through the whole time, it had never really occurred to her to wonder. Her life here had become something she didn't think about; it just happened, it just was. This sudden event was no different. She thought of Aizen, and her insides thawed a little, even though she was under close scrutiny of Ulquiorra. If Aizen felt it was the best, she would trust him until the very end.

Taking her silence as a cue to continue, he went on in a slightly bored voice, like the speech he was about to make was well exercised. 'Before our birth, when he still resided in Soul Society, Aizen-sama was researching the cross between Hollows and Shinigami.'

_Yes, yes, _she thought impatiently. She had heard a watered-down version of this from Grimmjow many times. 'He attempted innumerable times to produce a successful hybrid, but most of his experiments failed miserably. When exposed to human air,' He paused, his eyes drawing circles on her forehead, 'They suffocated and died.

'After much trial and error, he was able to perfect his experiments into what we are; that is, Arrancar. But he knew that with this discovery he could not keep them hidden from Soul Society for much longer. He needed something they wouldn't expect, something they couldn't foresee; something that he could keep hidden easily under the distraction if the winter war.'

The winter war was something she had heard of but did not understand. All she knew is that it worked Grimmjow up into such an excited state that he became more frightening than when he was enraged. 'Since there were Shinigami frequently patrolling Japan, he needed something that he could keep from their detection. Something without spiritual power. An Arrancar wouldn't do; even with their spiritual energy suppressed they were still noticeable. So he came up with something new.

He decided to create a human-hollow hybrid.'

She knew in the bottom of her stomach where this was going.

Searching her face for a reaction, Ulquiorra's gaze somehow became more intense. 'An average human is too frail to support a spiritual energy of a hollow. He needed someone with just a tiny amount. When he did, he grafted the Hollow onto the human's genes; it was dormant, and could not be awoken with a normal amount of reitsu. Anyone below a captain rank would have no effect on it.'

Ulquiorra looked at her very strangely then, as if she had asked a very confusing question, but she was quite certain she had not spoken.

There was a crash from very far away, and the noise made her wince. She thought of blue eyes, the color purple.

There was yelling, fits of screaming and smashing of stone, and she felt as though bugs were crawling beneath her skin. The fear permeated her like dye in water.

Blue and purple,

Green.

Greengreengreen.

If she said it in her mind enough times it didn't sound like a word anymore.

_Grimmjow, _She thought desperately, _Grimmjow, what are you doing?_

But then Ulquiorra's expression returned to normal and the crashing ceased, but somehow the silence was worse than the noise. He went on as if nothing had happened.

"But this experiment failed."

He tilted his head like a curious child at her, looking pensive. "Why do you look so surprised?"

She found that she lacked the method of replying. He accepted it as an answer. "This experiment failed because the growth has started too early. There is not enough time to use its potential power."

_Not enough time._

--

"You're going to die."

She was back into a wonderful sea of blue, and if she could stay with him and be in that wonderful azure sky that was Grimmjow, than it didn't matter what would happen anymore.

Bluebluebluegreen.

Heaven was blue and earth was green.

"I know."

She didn't care when it would happen, or why it was.

It was okay, because if she wasn't any use to Aizen, then there was no reason for her. No reason for her to be living, to be breathing, to be wasting his air.

He was wrong. She was growing too fast, overwhelmed by too much power. She was growing so fast that her skin and bones wouldn't be able to accommodate the new structures of body parts. She would kill herself just by living. She would tear herself apart, puncture her own lungs, pierce her own skin, shred her own muscles.

She didn't care.

The only thing she would miss was the sky.

But Grimmjow was being annoyingly rebellious against the whole idea.

When she looked at him she could see that child in him again. She wanted to take that child into her arms and comfort it, but that child was trapped inside an adult body, one that was mutilated, too perfect, too powerful. A weapon, a tool.

That child was trapped behind those eyes that she loved.

_Damaged goods._

She didn't care. She fixed something in him, something that had been dead on arrival. She fixed something, given him something.

She was glad, and she smiled.

And then he started yelling.

"What's with that face? How can you smile when you're a walking fucking _corpse!_?"

And that child behind his eyes started crying and crying and no matter how much she reached out she couldn't hold that child's hand.

**A/N: Sorry for such a late update, guys! A bit longer this time. Sorry if Grimm seems so out of character, I haven't been writing him lately.**


	7. Is

He hadn't been back for days.

Nobody came to her. She spent long, lonely hours, staring at her walls, reading the words that had begun to fade.

She hadn't washed in a while, nor had she eaten. She sat, hair limp, skin taken on a sick, yellowish tinge, her stomach hollow, eyes heavily lidded and dead, in the middle of her room. She couldn't sit on a couch or touch the covers of her bed or look at the poetry he had written for her on her ceiling.

She missed him, and she jumped every time she thought she heart footsteps, but each time she would discover that her heart kept pounding at inopprotune moments.

She was exhausted. Her cheeks were sunken in. Her skin was bruised, blotchy and purple, in various places around her body where new bones had begun to grow and swell.

The lumps on her head now bulged so large that her hair parted. They were ridden with painful crags which were glossed with clear pus, the skin angry and red.

The word _infection_ had come and gone.

That word made her ugly and poisonous. That word drove everything out of her mind except for the color green, something that she constantly thought about ever since Ulquiorra spoke to her.

She felt dirty inside. Like she was unclean, like her bowels were caked and weighed down with mud and filth.

_Unintentional suicide_ came from the lips of voices outside her door, pushing her food. _Useless, ugly girl, can't believe we have to take care of her, just let her die._

_Just let me die._

She didn't sleep, but she wasn't awake. She drifted through the days, hollow and dull, until silence became her constant and faithful companion. White became gray and blue faded to white, but green was always there, it was inside of her, it was part of her, as if just talking to the man with green eyes had tainted her.

_Greengreenbluewhitepurpleuglyugly_

She was hurt. She wondered if he wasn't there because she had become so ugly he couldn't stand it. Beaten purple and ruddy.

_Grimm,_ she thought. _Grim, come and play piano for me. Come write poems on the wall. Come and be my sky._

She was so selfish. So stupid to think for a second that someone had cared about her. It was his job. His job to care. It was his job to pass the time for her, his job to make the days go by, his job to make her feel safe at night.

_ThankyouGrimmybutyoucan'tleavemenotyet_

Thoughts ran, unlinked, fragile, primitive, bland, through her head.

_Whiskey is made for drinking ships are made for sinking_

_If we were all made of cellophane we'd all get drunk quite faster_

She wanted her sky back, she wanted her warmth back, she wanted her murderer, her ladykiller, her blood singer, her drunk, her turn-me-into-trash back.

_Ulquiorra didn't think she was ugly_

The first bone broke through her skin.

She only knew because of the red on her dress. The pain wasn't there. She turned her arm to find a tinge of white inside of the red, sprouting like a grotesque tree out of angry purple skin.

Three days. A week. More bones. More blood.

Fraccion said that Kurosaki Ichigo was closer.

She hated him. Ichigo.

Hated him.

_Don'thurtgrimmy_

Lonely.

Quiet.

And then the door opened.

The sound hurt her ears. It broke through the silence and she lifted her hands to cover her ears, only to find them covered in the red, bones like piano keys ran up and down her arms.

_Uglyuglyyou'reafuckingwalkingcorpse_

"Stand up."

His voice was like ice. Cold and hateful.

_Don'thatemeUlquiorra_

She tried. She tried standing, but found her legs twisted, bones like claws reaching out of her knees and calves, so she stumbled and fell.

Her eyes were half open, so she could see his foot come towards her in slow motion when he kicked her in the stomach.

"Pathetic," he said. His tone hurt her more than his kick. "Get up, Blanca."

She tried to grasp the cuffs of his pants, desperately trying to obey, but he kicked her again and she landed with a broken _thud_ a few feet away. "How dare you touch me," He hissed.

She could have cried, but she felt dry. Like sand.

It didn't hurt enough to cry.

She did her best to lift herself to a sitting position. Her knees trembled and her toes curled with the effot. Her elbows quaked.

She lifted a shaking hand to him.

"Help me," she told him. "I can't stand."

Another kick. Harder. She hit the wall, unresponsive as a porcelain doll. She felt new bones that had been waiting beneath the surface puncture. She was sure one of her ribs had broken. She couldn't breath. Blood blossomed like flowers across her breast and her stomach, her thin, malnourished, pallid skin tearing easily.

She just layed there for a minute. She wanted to sleep. She wanted to rest. Not being able to move came as a relief.

His shadow loomed.

She started to cry.

"Stop," she begged. "Stop it."

His foot rested, almost gently, on the curve of her hip. There was enough pressure to bruise, but it was like a breath of fresh air.

His hand, cold as death, snatched around her thin neck. He could snap it with a flick of his wrist, but he held her up over his head, her arms dangling uselessly, her fingers nearly brushing his face.

"Look at you," he said. "_Begging_ me. Worthless whore." His hand squeezed, constricting her airways. Her hands ran up his arms and met at her throat. She could feel each of his fingers beneath her. Tears trailed down her dirty cheeks, diluting the blood, and ran between her fingers.

Squeezed harder. Dots threatened at the corners of her eyes.

His skin was soft, but she could feel the hard cords of muscle in each finger.

Her hands left his and she reached the distance of what seemed like a million miles to his face. She trailed her fingers, lighter than spiderwebs, down his cheek, down the trail of green makeup.

She looked, for the first time, into his eyes. His pupils contracted, his jaw tightened with anger.

They weren't ugly anymore to her.

"How dare you—"

"You've got eyes like my mother's."

If possible, he looked paler. He applied more pressure, each pad of his fingers digging painfully into her throat. She tried to swallow, to moisten her mouth, and she could feel the contours of her neck shift uncomfortably against his grip.

"...What?" he said, very slowly and quietly.

"My mother's eyes are like yours. Same color. Very pretty."

Wrong, not pretty. Very, very beautiful.

She smiled, the flow of tears and thinned blood diverting down the curve of her cheeks. She shaped her palm around his face delicately, almost lovingly. "Hi, Mom. I miss you. I want to come home."

He dropped her like she had suddenly burned him. Her throat throbbed painfully and she coughed and choked on the air, her ribs retaliating angrily to her movements. Her knees crumpled awkwardly beneath her and she was left on the ground to listen to his footsteps retreat.

**A/N: Short, simple chapter. Please review! PLEASE! That lovely button is just begging to be pressed. Please review if you're reading this regularly, 'cause I know there are some freeloaders out there who are just faving and staying quiet! I want to know what you have to say!**

**And a cookie who recognized the song I slipped in there ;)**

**Cheers, **

**Bien  
**


	8. No

_Fuck._

She hated this, this waiting. She wanted to die, she wanted to die quickly so the pain would go away. Maybe she would see her mother and Grimmjow again in heaven.

If Grimm ever went to heaven.

If she ever went to heaven.

Inexplicable urges and feelings paced her system relentlessly. She wanted to sleep, to rest, but the fever and the pain kept her always awake. She wanted to just close her eyes so badly that she could cry, but it seemed that her tears had dried up when Ulquiorra left her.

_Notyoutoo_

It was as if her body was burning. Everything was hot and heavy. She felt suffocated by the thick air. She felt as if her own skin was weighing her down, pressing down, with heat wave after heat wave and blistering pain of infection rotting away her insides.

She couldn't move. She wanted to tear off her own skin to be free of the exhausting burden, she wanted to cut off the bones and shave off her hair that was plastered to her heavily perspiring skin. Every breath she inhaled brought agony. Her lungs had nearly collapsed. The bones protruded grotesquely out of her skin, sprouting like some sort hideous tree, curling wickedly back into herself.

The bones slowly and steadily spun a web around her, a hard, sharp, suffocating caccoon. It pinned her to the floor, the same exact place that she had been lying where she had landed after being kicked by Ulquiorra. Her skin seemed to have melted away. Everything was red. There was so much blood everywhere that it soaked through her clothes and drenched the floor around her, so much she couldn't even see the floor anymore.

Lustful thoughts, dirty thoughts, permeated her mind. The fever made her delirious. She found herself fantasizing and wondering. It kept her away from the pain for a while.

_Worthless whore._

It was impossible to tell how much time had gone by since Ulquiorra left her. Days, maybe. Months. Years. Maybe they had all forgotten about her. Maybe they were all dead. Maybe the war was over, maybe Inoue Orihime was free now, maybe Kurosaki Ichigo had killed Grimmjow and Ulquiorra and Aizen—

_You stupid fuck!_

She hated him. She prayed that he would find her here, an ugly, diseased, macabre, twisted mess. She would tear him apart, gut him like a fish, smear his bowels on the wall.

_I'll kill you Kurosaki Ichigo and I'll kill Inoue too, I'll kill you for what you've taken from me_

_I'll kill you_

She was able to sleep in a cloud of lustful dreams.

When she woke she wanted nothing more in the world than to just cry. Just to lay there, in her Iron Maiden of a caccoon, and cry.

She knew it was Kurosaki Ichigo's fault. She knew that he was taking everything she had ever had, ever wanted, and crumbling it to pieces.

She wanted to see Ulquiorra again, before she died. She wanted to look at his eyes again, to touch his face. He was beautiful and horribly ugly.

_Mommy is it so bad I want to see your eyes again_

_Is it so bad that I don't want Grimmjow right now_

_Is it so bad that I want somebody else_

_Is it so bad that I hate Ulquiorra_

_Is it so bad that I want to die?_

She thought of Grimmjow. She wondered how angry he'd be if he knew that she had touched Ulquiorra Schiffer, if he'd be angry that she was in love with his eyes, his face.

She wondered if Grimmjow would hit her if he finally came back to her. She wondered if he would kick her and punch her and beat her.

She'd rather die because of him than anything else.

_I don't hate you, Ichigo._

_I don't hate you, Ulquiorra._

_I hate being ugly. I hate the pain. _

_I hate myself.  
_

The sound of the door opening was so loud after what seemed like an eternity of silence. She wanted to scream. Too loud, way too loud.

The sound of footsteps were heavy and dangerous.

"Oh, fuck. You're a mess, ballarina."

**A/N: This chapter is short. Sorry. Was feeling unispired but I wanted to write. Anyway, yeah, I know Ulquiorra was out of character in the last chapter, but it seemed to suit him. **

**And again, this isn't a love story, so those of you holding your breath for a fluff scene, you can let it out. XD Sorry, but my number one pet peeve for OC stories are the shitty little fluff scenes that are so unlikely and out of character it makes me sick.**

**Cheers!  
**


	9. God

The female Fraccion bathed her with ginger, tender hands, careful to avoid freshly stitched wounds. The water was warm and comforting, but Blanca's head lolled over her shoulders, eyes barely open, her breathing shallow and choppy.

She was finally free. There were no more bones. All gone. No more infection, no more sickness, no more red.

Just blue and clean and happy and tired.

She could see Grimmjow's back turned to her. He hadn't said anything, but he hadn't left, even when the fraccion had undressed her to amputate the remaining bones.

He had carried her all the way to the hospital quarters. Miles and miles from her chambers. The whole way, he hadn't spoken a word. His eyes were dark, his mouth fixed into a frown. He didn't look angry, though, which she would have liked more than this gloomy silence. He looked overworked; there were circles beneath his eyes. He looked beaten and defeated.

That scared her, but she didn't say anything to him, either. She watched him carefully through her feathered eyelashes, but not a muscle in his back twitched, nothing moved.

Where was the yelling? Where was the fit? Where was the beating and the pain and the hurt?

"I am very thankful of you bringing her here, Sexta Espada-sama," The fraccion said, clearly taking a chance. "She would have died in the next few hours."

_Brave girl._

Grimmjow let out a husky, gravelly sigh that sounded more like a growl. His shoulders shifted powerfully and he leaned back onto his palms.

"She was an eyesore." He said gruffly. His voice was deeper than usual. It was scratched and rough.

_See? You're an ugly little bitch._

Blanca smiled, though. She knew he couldn't see her, but she smiled anyway.

"You're back," she said to him. She was frightened by how weak and quiet her voice sounded.

He tilted his head to the side, like he was thinking something over.

"Yeah."

"However," the fraccion went on. There was clear fear in her voice now. "The growth will not stop just because I've cut the bones off. She will still die, even if the process is slowed down."

_Still going to die._

Grimmjow didn't say anything. He had probably known that, anyway. But Blanca didn't mind. She was going to die someday anyway.

"Grimm," Blanca began, and he finally looked at her. His eyes were devoid of the fire and the spark. "Grimm, what happened when you were gone?"

He didn't answer her question. His shoulders were quaking. She braced herself, waiting for the fist to come around and hit her.

He laughed.

It was a horrible laugh. She hated that laugh. It was the laugh after he hurt someone, after he had killed someone.

It was a happy laugh.

"What the hell did you do to piss Ulquiorra off?" he asked, nearly shouting with glee. Her insides shuddered and she wished to curl away from him, but her broken body prohibited her from moving. "Priceless! Fucking priceless!"

She was scared now.

"Stop," she said. "Stop laughing."

But he didn't hear her.

"Get yer fucking clothes on, ballerina! If I drag you outta here naked, people're gonna talk! "

He whipped around, grasping her head like a basketball and raising her out of the tub. Her toes barely touched the surface of the warm water. She was too tired to cover herself up. He shook her like a ragdoll, laughing with a crazed gleam in his azure eyes.

The fraccion was terrified now, and she was able to throw a white robe onto Blanca's shoulders.

"Grimmjow-sama, I don't think that's wise—"

The fraccion's head went flying across the room. The blood made the water pink. Blanca's robe was splashed with red.

_REDHOLYFUCKREDNONONO_

Blanca screamed.

Grimmjow was alarmed, and he dropped her onto the ground where she crumpled, the robe covering her like a blanket. She shook.

_NO MORE RED NO NO NO BLOOD BLOOD NO!_

She was done with red, no more blood, no more hurt no more rot no more infection NONONONO

"ULQUIORRA!"

Her voice lacerated the air. It was shrill and high, unpleasant, and she flinched at the sound, even if it was her own.

"Savemedon'twanttodielikethisnononoNO!" she shrieked.

Her volume lowered into rapid, nonsensical stammering. Her mind was blank but her mouth kept moving. Her eyes were closed tightly and she took salvation in the darkness behind her eyelids.

Grimmjow must have been talking to her, because there were voices outside her own, but she couldn't hear the words. There was a silence that was ringing in her ears, a silence that was loud and screamed at her.

The hands that stood her on her feet were cold. They wrapped the robe around her body almost tenderly, covering her up. The cloth was warm.

_God, there's something wrong with me._

She tried very hard to slow down her breathing. In, out. Don't hyperventilate.

She opened her eyes and she could see the purple of bruises on her alabaster skin, blotchy and ugly.

"Grimmjow, keep your whore covered up. She's an eyesore."

She raised her head and she saw her mother's eyes again, set into a face that she hated.

"I'm nobody's whore." She whispered.

The hands let go of her. Like they were afraid of her. She felt powerful. She wanted to laugh.

The power felt good. She could feel it beneath her skin, racing in her blood. She wasn't sick anymore. She was better now. Much better.

She swung her hand out in a wide arc and felt the back of it connect with cold skin. Her wrist snapped painfully. Broken again. She didn't care. She shook it. It bobbed up and down uselessly. It was funny, in a sick kind of way.

Grimmjow laughed.

"You crazy bitch!" He howled, the mirth clear in his voice. "You lunatic little fuck!"

Ulqiuorra said nothing. She listened to his footsteps leave.

**A/N: kay. New chapter. Lol. Um. I don't know. PLEASE review! I know there are people out there who are faving the story but I get no reviews! C'mon, cut me some slack. Don't be freeloaders. XD  
**


	10. To

She's always been a good girl.

She'd gotten good grades. Handed in her homework. Studied. Didn't drink. Didn't smoke. Didn't do drugs. Never had sex.

_I've been good, mom. Always been perfect. The very best._

_So, mommy, what made me into this monster?_

_What have I done?_

"Do you love him, Kamamura-san?"

Blanca's legs were drawn up to her chest, her head buried between her knees. She had been crying for a long time now, but she couldn't remember when the tears had stopped. Spent. Cold. All dried up.

Kamamura. That was her name, wasn't it? She had forgotten it. Frustration rose in the pit of her stomach. She didn't want it anymore. Aizen had given her a name. Blanca was her name. And that name was worth more to her than a million lives.

Kamamura Mitsuoko.

That name called up too many memories. They lingered just beneath the surface of her mind, taunting, tickling. Hurtful memories. Painful memories.

She blocked them out. She didn't want them anymore.

Ridiculous.

She was free, now. The sky was open, the moon was bright, and the sand spanned out beyond the horizon like a frozen sea.

She hated it. There were no walls. No poems. No chess games. No songs.

Nothing. Nothing to keep her safe. Nothing but the noises she refused to hear, nothing but the blue she didn't want to see.

Not now. Not with the red all over her beautiful blue, all over her sky. She was afraid he'd turn purple, like the words on her wall.

Grimmjow had taken her away from the hospital. He took her out into the tundra, into the white sand. He was like a jewel against the bleached landscape. He was even more beautiful then. He was alive and he was breathing and he was happy, at least.

And then the fight had started.

And Kurosaki Ichigo was going to take her sky away from her.

Her head turned, ever so slowly, half fearing she would break her neck. She kept her eyes closed until she made the rotation to face to her right. She didn't want to see in front of her. She didn't want to look out over the endless desert.

"What?" She said in a broken whisper.

Inoue Orihime's eyes were wide with concern, sadness, pity. Her head tilted and her hair, well kept and smooth, spilled over her shoulders.

Blanca hated her eyes. They had depth but were such an ugly color. Silver. Not blue or green.

_Not like your eyes, mommy. You have the prettiest eyes of all. _

Blanca had long forgotten about Inoue Orihime. The name hadn't passed through her mind in what seemed like years. She was surprised that such a person still existed. She was surprised that a world existed outside at all.

Orihime's lips parted, and her tongue paused at the edge of her teeth, apprehensive to speak. Her slim, perfectly arched eyebrows pulled together in a pensive kind of frown.

Orihime's gaze turned, out beyond the glowing golden aura that separated them from the wide expanse of land below. Blanca could see the reflections in her eyes. She could see the movements and the fight.

Orihime sat a few feet to Blanca's right. Orihime looked down, far below the pillar of cold, marble stone that they were perched upon like timid birds.

She turned her head dropped it down between her knees again. She didn't want to see it. She didn't want to see anything anymore.

She wished to gouge out her eyes. Her ugly green eyes. But there were no sharp objects available to her.

If she could be blind, then it would be okay.

_But what will you see the sky with?_

"Are you in love with Grimmjow?"

Orihime's voice came again. It was small and quiet, but there was a soft sort of kindness in it.

_Grimmjow._

Blanca's head rose again, despite herself. She stared out past the barrier, to the figures beyond. To the blue and the black.

To the red.

"Inoue," the name tasted different on Blanca's tongue, it had been so long since she had said a Japanese name. She paused, unsure of what she would say. "I don't know what that means anymore."

A crash from below. A yell.

Orihime stood quickly, but Blanca stayed frozen and forced herself to keep her eyes trained to the moon up above them.

_Grimmjow, what's taking you so long? _

_Kill him._

_Make him bleed. Make him hurt._

_Ulquiorra wouldn't take this long._

_If you don't kill him, then I will._

_I'll rip him to shreds._

_Ichigo, you bastard._

_I'll kill you._

"I know you do."

Orihime's voice was a little sad, now. Smoother.

Blanca didn't move.

"Excuse me?" she said faintly.

"I know you love him. I can see it in your eyes."

"You're wrong."

"Don't be afraid, Kamamura-san."

_Don't be afraid._

Hell of a lot of good that had done her.

_Look, Mommy, I'm a monster._

_Are you afraid?_

_**A/N: **_**Sorry, I didn't realize this chapter was so short. You guys all know I'm a big time IchiRuki shipper, but Orihime has this thing about her that I like. She's not gonna be a big part in this story, I promise. I'm just using her as a tool to bring out things I need to establish. And again! I'm not turning this into a love story. There's still a few more chapters to go! Don't make assumptions just yet!**

**EDIT: See why I rely on you guys so much? Thank you so much for pointing out the mistakes! They're fixed, so I hope it's not so confusing now!  
**


	11. Believe

She knew in her heart that he was going to die. It spread through her insides like a disease. It was a cold, lonely, tugging feeling.

_Mommy, I don't want him to die. _

_Daddy, don't leave me all alone._

The hospital bed linens were thin and cool and the sound of his heartbeat, beeping faintly up on the monitor, seemed to get farther and farther away with every second.

He had been sick for a long time. For more than a year now. He had been getting better, but then it came back worse than ever. And now here he was, the most powerful man she had ever known, lying, weak, fragile, and pathetic, with his eyes already dead. There was no more life, no more happiness, no more smile, in his eyes.

She hated it.

She was afraid to take his hand. She was afraid that if she touched him, he'd break.

He was thin, now. His chest had grown narrow and his skin had grown pale. There were circles beneath his eyes and his cheeks looked hollow.

He looked like a ghost, and it scared her.

His hair had always been long; it was dark as midnight and hung in limp clumps around his gaunt face. His eyelids were heavy and she could hardly see his irises, and even if now they were dull, the gentle, honey brown of his eyes still shone through their gloomy housings like beacons.

She loved her father.

He was kind and compassionate and smart; he could always make her laugh. He never yelled. He never got angry. He was a wonderful man.

She was so young, then. She could see her hands, small, delicate, still pudgy with baby fat, ringing in her lap, but she couldn't feel her own fingers. Everything felt numb and cold; she couldn't stand, she couldn't speak, she couldn't cry.

IV's draped over his feeble limbs, needles gliding smoothly into the veins in his hands that protruded from his nearly transparent skin. He had been young barely a year ago; still sick, but happy, laughing, with a flush in his cheeks. He told her not to worry.

_Don't cry, little one,_ He'd say to her. _Your Daddy's strong. Your Daddy's going to make it through this, and then we'll watch the cherry blossoms fall together._

Spring had come and gone. She had watched the flowers alone.

At his funeral, she wore a white dress. She knew he would hate it if she wore black. She could hear his voice now, chastising her.

_Black is such an ugly color, _she knew he would say. _Black is a sad, lonely, awful color._

So she never wore black. Not even to his funeral. Because she knew that it would make him sad, up in the clouds, to see his only child in such a morose hue.

Her father's favorite color was green. He told her so when he was brushing her hair one morning, and then he pointed to her reflection in the mirror.

_Always be proud to have green eyes,_ He said. _ They're so beautiful._

She had grown to love her eyes, even if she was made fun of at school. She was proud, because in a sea of brown and black, her father told her that her eyes were the most beautiful.

She didn't know what she would do without her father.

She imagined that he rose quietly and peacefully from his body after he had been laid to rest.

She threw her chrysanthemums down. They were white, too.

Her father had been her sky every since she had been born. He was there to listen to her and tell her things were going to be okay. He was there to tell her bedtime stories and to keep away the monsters who hid in her closet. He taught her how to walk.

When he died, he took the sky with him. He took the sun and the moon and the stars. He took the birds and the green away from her. He took her heart and her voice and her feelings, leaving her hollow, alone, and made of stone.

She didn't think about her father after the funeral, or for weeks after that. She didn't think about how empty she felt, or how the sun had disappeared, or how it seemed to rain every day. She didn't think about the color green. She didn't think about hospitals or the sound of a flat lining heart. She didn't think of black lacquer boxes or long black cars. She didn't think about cherry blossoms or how her hair had turned black after days spent in the house.

She was that girl for eleven years of her life. For those eleven hollow years, she was Kamamura Mitsuoko.

The day she found her sky again, she was almost eighteen.

**A/N: Sorry the update was a little late. Almost done, just one more chapter, you guys!  
**


	12. In

_Do you love him?_

His face was calm and pristine even if it was bloody. He looked as if he were sleeping, his eyelids stretched over his azure eyes, and she silently begged them to stay closed, because she didn't know if she could take it if he looked at her.

The red dripped off of every curve, every arc in his body. It was like a blanket, a spider web that spun around him almost lovingly. She was vaguely surprised that his skin didn't turn purple where the red touched him.

She wanted so badly to touch him but she feared that he would shatter like a broken glass.

Like he'd break and then the heart monitor would stop beeping and his eyes would be dead.

_Deadandgonelikeyourdaddy_

_Deadandgone_

Her lips paused when she tried to form his name, apprehensive, as if she would wake him from a long sleep. She wanted so badly for him to move, to stand up, but at the same time she wanted him to stay and keep breathing,

The sky above her was dark.

Orihime had left her a long time ago. The fight had ended. Blanca hadn't cried when she saw her precious sky, bloody and bruised and broken, lying in the white sand.

_MyangelmyonlyGrimmjowwhathaveyoudone?_

She watched as his powerful chest rose and fell in time to his shallow breaths. He was tired. He would die soon, she knew it, she knew it in the pit of her stomach.

_I'm going to lose you again, Daddy. I'm going to lose my sky._

She wanted to scream. She wanted to shake him and hit him and hurt him, just so he would say something, just so he would seem alive.

She found that she couldn't bear to extend her hand and touch him. She was frozen on her knees, bent over his body, and the sound of the air rushing in and out of his lungs drilled into her brain.

_In, out. In, out._

She clung to that sound like a life raft, as if she were dying and not him.

"Grimmjow," her voice was weak and whispery. Her elbows shuddered as they struggled to support her weight. Her hair, dark as midnight, pooled over the exposed muscles on his chest. She watched, her eyes heavily lidded and tired, as the contours of his neck shifted as he swallowed. "Grimmjow, come on. Get up. Get up."

He didn't move. His breathing became heavier. His lips parted and the air seemed to rip out of his throat, rubbing it raw.

She screamed at him.

"GET UP!"

Nothing. His eyelids flickered and she could see his eyes moving feverishly beneath them.

She didn't know she was crying until she saw the salty water dilute the red on his chest.

Her hands were cold and clammy against his skin. It seemed to burn her, but her hands ran down his arm and she clenched his fingers.

She leaned her head against his chest and she could just barely hear the sound of his heartbeat. She took comfort in his blazing warmth.

--

_'Mommy, why did Daddy have to die?'_

_'Your Daddy was very sick, sweetie.'_

_'But he didn't do anything wrong. He was a good Daddy. God didn't have to take him back.'_

_'God loves your father. He will take care of him.'_

_'But _I_ love Daddy. _ I_ want Daddy. I don't _care_ if God loves him. Daddy belongs to _me_.'_

_'Sweetheart, everything belongs to God.'_

_'Not Daddy. Daddy's mine.'_

_--_

_'Ma'am, I'm very sorry. You're husband is dead.'_

_'I know. Thank you.'_

_'If there's anything I can do for you, please let me know.'_

_'I will.'_

_--_

Blanca hadn't prayed since she was little. Her father was a strict Catholic, even if he was born in Japan. Praying made her feel safe, but she wasn't sure if she believed in the same god that her father did. She was skeptical, even at a young age, especially after her father's death. She figured that if there was a God, then He would love her enough not to take something so precious away.

But she watched her father float away, light as a feather. She watched him rise away from his body and she watched the light leave from his eyes. She heard the monitor flat line and she heard her mother crying and the doctors pushed her out of the room.

She watched silently as the only faith she ever had was crushed and destroyed. She watched as her sky turned gray.

_Don't take Grimmy away from me._

_I don't want to wait to go to heaven to see him again._

Blanca felt very small and feeble curled against Grimmjow, who's massive, generously muscled frame dwarfed hers easily. She felt helpless.

_I might not make it to heaven, Daddy._

She suddenly felt very old.

She let her eyes close and she listened desperately to the sound of his heart. She twined her fingers around his, tracing circles in his palm.

She began to cry again.

--

_'Mommy, where are they taking him, Daddy, don't, stop it—'_

_'I'm sorry sweetie. I'm so sorry.'_

_'No, where are they taking him? Stop it, stop it, don't touch my Daddy,'_

_'Shh, sweetheart.'_

_'STOP IT!'_

_--_

She would not watch her sky go dark again. She would burn the whole fucking world before that happened. She would not hear the flat lining and she would not let him leave. No. No fucking sir.

By now the blood had stopped flowing. His breathing had grown shallow and gentle, as if he were sleeping, but Blanca knew better.

He was dying.

Dyingdyingdying.

But what hurt most was that she knew she wouldn't go back to her mother. She was alone, now. She had been alone the day the sky went dark, and she had been alone ever since.

Grimmjow took that loneliness away. He came to her like a prayer and gave her a home again. He gave her light and he gave her green and life and the sky again.

But he'd leave like a dream, just as her father had. He'd disappear and all that would be left would be scraps of light and memories and pain and hurt. But he had taught her what it felt like to have someone to love again, and for that, she'd be eternally grateful.

Her home had been with her father for only a precious six years. For eleven more years, she had been homeless, alone, wandering, adrift in a smothering fog and she was sure that she'd drown in the numbness. But her home was with her sky.

She'd stay with Grimmjow until the bitter end.

She raised her head from his chest. Her small hands ran up his arms and they encircled his face, stroking the bony mass of teeth molded to his cheek and wiping the sweat and the blood from his forehead. She smoothed the shock of azure hair away from his face.

He looked just like an angel. Her fingertips grazed lightly over the thin skin around his eyes.

"What the hell are ya doin', ballerina?"

His voice was so worn and ragged she didn't know what he had said for a moment. It came out as a series of guttural, painful sounds.

"Don't talk." She ordered flatly. She was frightened by the deadpan tone of her own voice.

He grunted and shifted his weight, trying to sit up. She tried forcing him down, but it didn't do much. "Stop, Grim, you're going to hurt yourself."

"Shut the fuck up." He growled. He was able to right himself, his shoulders rolling powerfully.

He stared away from her, across the sands. "God damn it," he muttered.

His fist pounded into the ground so close to her that she shrieked in alarm as he howled wildly,

"GOD FUCKING DAMN IT!"

He breathed heavily and shook his head like an angry bear, but he did not stand. She doubted he had the strength to.

He looked at her, his eyes blazing with blue fire, and she flinched at the intensity. "Where the fuck is that little rat bastard? I'll fucking kill him!"

"You've lost."

Her voice was quiet but he stopped and stared at her.

"What?" he said, almost dumbstruck.

"You've lost. You've failed. Now lie the fuck down, you're going to bleed to death."

He blinked, and then opened his mouth as if to yell.

"Wh—"

"Save it. I'm not going to go through this again."

She planted her hands on his chest and pushed down with all of her strength, and he disdainfully lay back down in the sand.

She began to tear strips out of her dress and cleaned the blood from his cuts.

It was a long time before he seemed pacified. She didn't say anything while she worked, and he stared up into the sky, his expression vacant save for the small tension in his brow.

"Tell me about your family." He said.

She paused briefly in her bandaging.

"What?"

"Your family, idiot. Your mom. Your dad."

"My dad's dead."

"Do ya have any brothers or whatever?"

"No. Only child."

"Must be lonely."

She looked at him and he looked a little sad, something that she had never seen in him before. But he didn't elaborate.

"Grimm, if we don't get you to a medic soon, you're going to die." She said.

"I don't care." He said.

"I do."

"Naw, you don't. Humans don't care about shit."

"Neither do you."

He scoffed harshly.

"You got yer whole life ahead of ya. Yer gonna die happy and yer gonna die young, without a fuckin' care in the world." He sighed heavily. "Ya don't hafta fight or nothin'. Yer gonna live a peaceful life after this fuckdamn war, yer gonna go back to the human world and yer gonna have nothin' to do with us.'

She was quiet, and then tied a knot in the bandage.

"I want to die here." She said.

"Why?"

"This is where I belong. This is my home, now."

He grinned wolfishly and shook his head.

"You are a crazy lil' bitch, aren't ya, Blanca?"

She just smiled.

**A/N: FINALLY DONE!**

**I edited it a little bit.  
**

**I'm so sorry. It's bad. I know. I lost steam and I didn't know how to wrap it up. Bad timing and gross bleh all over the place. Really, I am sorry. But I'm done! Glee! I got tired of this story a long time ago. But I'll be starting two new stories, one on my own, and one will be a collaboration with the wonderful D R A G O N L I L I E S! So, subscribers, you won't be disappointed! I'll be posting out collab account name soon on my profile page.**

**Thank you all so much for sticking with me and Blanca until the end. (Even if the end was indeed very cruddy.) This is the first story I've bothered to finish and the first story that I've every gotten so many reviews. Thank you so much for pushing me across the finish line and giving me my first successful fanfiction!  
**

**For those of you who took the time to review, you get a special thank you. You have no idea how much you all make my day and make me smile.**

**Yours,**

**Bienvenue  
**


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